Building an African Market: Solar Energy Entrepreneurs on the Rise

Private sector involvement in African renewable energy has traditionally been slim. But new entrepreneurs are arising here and even aid organisations are taking steps to do business.

Charities' early efforts to distribute clean energy technologies in Africa met with little success. Their use of donor funding to heavily subsidise products such as solar lighting kits would generally fulfil a programme's short-term targets, but in the long run the expertise and equipment needed to maintain the systems failed to be adequately developed or provided. Crucially, no new...